Questions Surround a Delay in Help for a Dying Man

It will probably never be clear how many people realized that Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was dying.

One man bent down to the sidewalk to shake the man, lifting him to reveal a pool of blood before walking away. Two men appeared to have a conversation about the situation, one pausing to take a photo of the body before departing. But the rest merely turned their heads toward the body, revealing some curiosity as they hurried along.

What is clear from a surveillance tape is that Mr. Tale-Yax, a homeless 31-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, lay on a Queens street for more than an hour before anyone called the police. By the time help arrived, he was dead.

Mr. Tale-Yax, who friends said occasionally worked as a day laborer and often slept in public parks, had been stabbed while apparently coming to the assistance of a woman being angrily confronted by another man.

On Sunday, a week after the killing, people in the area seemed mostly unshaken by its circumstances. Many were unaware that someone had died on 144th Street in Jamaica, near 88th Road, in a hardscrabble neighborhood with large populations of Central American immigrants and of homeless men.

Perhaps the passers-by thought he was just drunk. Perhaps they were illegal immigrants themselves, too nervous to contact the authorities. Or perhaps they had just learned a lesson that Mr. Tale-Yax so clearly had not: better to keep to oneself than to risk the trouble that comes from extending a helping hand.

“It’s bad,” said Alexis Perez, 29, the superintendent of two buildings on the block where the stabbing occurred. “But I live here, so I know what it’s like. There are a lot of alcoholics who drink and then they fall down and they’re laying on the ground. People say to themselves, ‘I don’t know them so I won’t get involved.’ ”

At the Iglesia Cristo Peniel, a small brick assembly hall bursting with Spanish hymns, Uber Bautista, 37, a heavy-machinery operator who identified himself as a church elder, said that he believed the inaction might have stemmed from illegal immigrants’ trying to escape detection.

“So they’re going to be very afraid to call the authorities if they see something,” he said. “It’s not that people don’t care.”

Photo

Police tape remained Sunday at the spot in Queens where Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, a homeless man, lay dying a week before.Credit
Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Juan Cortez, himself the victim of several assaults, offered another theory as he collected cans from the trash nearby. “People mind their own business,” he said.

Regardless of the explanation, the death has become another unfortunate case study in bystander behavior in emergencies, a psychological field that developed after the notorious 1964 killing of Kitty Genovese. She was stabbed to death at an apartment building in Kew Gardens, Queens, where a large number of neighbors heard her screams but did not call the police.

The death of Mr. Tale-Yax is all the more dramatic because police say that he was stabbed as a result of his apparently trying to help a stranger.

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“I’m afraid what we’ve got here is a situation of people failing to help, and the failure appears to be a moral failure,” said John Darley, a professor of psychology at Princeton University who has written about bystander response to emergencies. “He did what you’re supposed to do, and we let the person, who did what he was supposed to do, die.”

In New York, as in most other states, there is no legal obligation for a bystander to help someone in distress, said Harold Takooshian, a psychology professor at Fordham University who has also studied the subject.

The episode began before 6 a.m. when Mr. Tale-Yax intervened in a noisy dispute on 144th Street between an unidentified man and an unidentified woman and was stabbed, said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, chief spokesman for the New York Police Department.

The man fled in one direction, the woman fled in the other, and Mr. Tale-Yax ran a few steps before collapsing on the pavement.

A surveillance video from an adjacent building captured the reactions of those who passed by. The video was posted on The New York Post’s Web site.

During that time, the police responded to three 911 calls, said Mr. Browne. The first, shortly before 6 a.m., reported a woman screaming; the second, at 7:09, reported a man lying on the street. But both calls gave incorrect addresses.

The third, at 7:21, also reported a man lying in the street. It led to the discovery of the body.

“We would expect someone to call 911 and, if possible, to stay with the victim until help arrives,” Mr. Browne said.

María Luz de Zyriek, the second-ranking official at the Guatemalan Consulate, said preparations were being made to fly the body of Mr. Tale-Yax back to Guatemala for burial.

A version of this article appears in print on April 26, 2010, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Questions Surround a Delay in Help for a Dying Man. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe